


In the Works

by Mira_Jade



Series: The Makings Of [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: . . . and gals, . . . keep up boys, Alternate Universe - Avengers: Infinty War never happened, Building the Young Avengers: MCU Style, Fluff, For Science!, Gen, Hank Pym vs. Tony Stark, Look at that: My Hand Slipped and Everyone's Alive and Happy, Parent Tony Stark, SO MUCH FLUFF, Science Bros, Shuri is a genius, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 15:56:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18694663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mira_Jade/pseuds/Mira_Jade
Summary: "Really, we should have gone to Aunt Shuri first."





	In the Works

**Author's Note:**

> Because this fandom needs a few thousand words of nonsensical silliness right about now, and I'm happy to provide. Enjoy!

 

Tony Stark had only been out for the morning, the _morning._ It’d been a simple idea at first: drop Morgan off at the Facility for a few hours while he took care of a few things downstate in Manhattan with Pepper, and then he’d swing back by to pick her up again. Maybe then he'd even chill and catch up with the team for a few hours before he returned back home with his family. When he instead had Friday alerting him that Protocol: Nanny I-IV had been tripped, he’d left Pepper in the boardroom and raced off as fast as he could to investigate, even donning his armor for the first time in months to cut his commute time down to mere minutes. He knew that his daughter wasn’t in any true harm’s way – he had protocols in place for that too, and she was surrounded by the Avengers themselves, which included the force of nature there was to be found in one Natasha Romanov when there were children to protect – but he had to see for himself. Friday had specifically mentioned a fire, and that could mean anything. How, his mind raced to boggle once the entryway swished open, had the clean and tidy lab he’d left behind, with his clean and tidy daughter to match, now be so obviously in the post stages of an experiment gone wrong? There were the tell-tale marks of an explosion blackening the walls, and there were puddles on the floor and on the work benches from where the sprinkler system has gone off as a precaution. Morgan herself had soot staining her cheeks, his heart leapt to notice, never mind that she seemed to be – and Friday did a quick scan when ordered to confirm – in one piece and no worse for the wear when he looked her over. 

  
Good, she wasn’t hurt. That meant that he could skip straight to the part where he demanded to know just _what_ had happened.

  
Yet, his thundering was to no avail when two pairs of brown eyes, one dark and intense and the other hazel and bright, clashed with his own, and he was stared down without remorse.

  
“Lila’s graduating next month,” Morgan started, all _almost_ ten years old going on thirty with her sass and her hands propped on her hips. His daughter had a withering cast to her gaze that Tony was going to say was all Pepper in her DNA and not just karma turning right back around to smack him in the face with his past sins. _Obviously._ He knew how to give credit where credit was due.

  
“We knew exactly what gift we wanted for her,” Cassandra Lang crossed her arms over her chest to continue, “but after _you_ said no - ” 

  
“ - and after her _stuffy old grandpa_ said no,” Morgan jabbed her thumb back at Cassie and turned her nose up as if her opinion on Hank Pym was more than apparent (which Tony was _not_ going to be proud of – until later, of course), “all for no good reason - ” 

  
“ - you just bypassed me entirely and went to _him?”_ Tony ran a hand through his _definitely_ graying hair before giving a noisy sigh through his teeth. “Banner, buddy, how could you?”

  
“Well, technically, they bypassed you and went to _him,”_ Bruce somehow managed to hunch over as if being a near eight foot tall, half-hulked out green wrecking ball of muscle didn’t mean a thing. He meekly twiddled his thumbs, clearly fretting for the idea that he’d crossed some unseen parental boundaries. Honestly, if Tony hadn’t been able to fix his friend by now, he didn’t think he ever would. _But,_ he was then more interested in the way Peter Parker threw his hands up and held them there like he was cornered by the law after trying to flee the scene of a crime. 

  
Huh: how fitting. 

  
“Oh no no no: _not_ guilty, Mr. Stark,” the young man – and now official Avenger – waved his hands wildly in alarm. “The girls said they wanted to make a gift for Lila, and, you know, I was cool with that. Lila’s awesome and all and she deserves a totally sick weapon like her dad’s. I was helping them design trick arrows, but not ones that would _explode.”_

  
“Um, I may have helped add the last part – you know, the exploding bit,” Bruce interjected to admit. “But, I honestly thought they had permission - ” 

  
“ - Banner,” Tony sighed again, _“why_ do you think they’d have permission for something designed to cause _this much_ destruction and property damage when they’re not even old enough to drink?” Peter gave him a strange look for that, but Tony would _not_ be called out for hypocrisy just then – it was called _character growth._ “And just _look_ at my lab,” he well knew that he was channeling Howard Stark to a _T_ , but was unable to wholly help himself. “You know what we’ve tampered with in our time, right? And it’s an _arrow_ that quite literally blows up in your face? Really, take some pride in your work and - ” 

  
“ - okay, okay. I hear you, Tony. But, Lila is set to go through SHIELD training, right?” Bruce furrowed his brow. “She’s going to be one of us soon, and I just thought that maybe she was starting early with the accessories. Nat didn’t think anything of it, so I didn’t either.”

  
“Et tu, brute? Or _et tu, Nat,_ should I say?” he whirled, just in time, to see the devil herself walk into the lab. As always, Natasha's stride was languid with a deceiving nonchalance as she folded her arms over her chest. She arched a red brow as she took the scene in, and then pointedly came to stand by Bruce’s side.

  
“Oh,” she waved her hand, clearly unimpressed by his attempts to be the _only responsible adult in the room,_ “let the girl have a few exploding arrows, Tony. It’s nothing worse than anything we were getting into when we were her age.” 

  
“Uh, speak for yourself, Miss Romanova. When _I_ was her age, I was - ” Tony began before snapping his mouth shut and thinking the better of what he was going to say. Morgan was there, after all, and if her stare was withering when she thought that he was in the wrong then Pepper’s was ten times worse. Easily. “You know,” he blithely amended, “it doesn’t matter, strike that -”

_  
“Thank goodness,”_ Bruce muttered under his breath. 

  
“ - and whatever . . . ” Tony ignored his friend to gesture up and down at Natasha, “terrifying things you were up to as a newly unleashed _Black Widow_ don’t count. The Cold War’s over, hate to tell you, sweets.” 

  
Natasha shrugged, little impressed. “The kids are growing up, is all I’m trying to say. That’s not a bad thing.” Her voice was gentle, pointedly so; Tony didn’t like the nuanced implication of her timbre in the slightest. He made a face: that wasn't what this was about, _at all,_ and he was insulted that she even thought that he was having difficulties with letting go as their next generation stepped in place to surpass them. No, he was proud of that, he was proud _of them –_ ridiculously so _._ Morgan and Cassie and Lila and Peter – even Wanda and Vision’s terrifyingly supernatural twins and Shuri and Bucky’s brat – were poised to be their guardians of tomorrow, and, with them, the future safety of the world was as bright as it was assured. But, if they thought that he’d stand by and let them throw themselves into the truly dangerous, awful world that was waiting for them even a _second_ sooner than was necessary -

  
\- Natasha’s eyes glittered with mirth as she stared at him; the corner of her mouth quirked upwards. Tony hated everything she just said without saying a single word aloud. He disagreed, _entirely._

  
“Besides,” Natasha turned away from him and raised her voice to address everyone in the still smoking lab, “Clint already commissioned Shuri to fill a quiver for Lila. Sorry, boys,” she shrugged her shoulders when the scientists in the room all turned to gape at her, “but she’s Lila’s favourite for a reason.”

  
“Huh,” Bruce was thoughtful to muse, “you know? I should have see that coming.” 

  
“What? _How?”_ for that pertinent piece of intel, Tony’s eyes boggled. He fought not to twitch at the insult that had been done to him and his fellow men of science. “Clint didn’t come to _me?_ But I’m his teammate! We’ve literally fought wars together. What’s more than that: I’m the foremost inventor of our generation, and I have decades of creating morally questionable weapons of mass destruction under my belt - more so than _Her Highness has even been alive_. I figured out _time travel,_ for God’s sake. For a couple of arrows, even Hank could figure out how to pull his head out of his - ” but he stopped himself right there. Acknowledging _his_ competency was going too far. Hearing his near slip of tongue, Natasha grinned at him like the cat who got the canary.

  
“I don’t know,” no matter that he was a burgeoning scientific mind in his own right, Peter was happy to nod his head and add, “it makes sense to me.” 

  
“Of course it makes sense: Aunt Shuri is a _genius,”_ Morgan breathed to add, her eyes wide with adoration. Other children had pictures of superheroes or pop stars or movie characters up on their bedroom walls, but Morgan held one Wakandian princess and cutting edge engineer as her idol and inspiration. For that, Tony was not jealous . . . at all. Nope. No siree. “Really, we should have gone to her first,” she turned to Cassie to say. 

  
“Obviously,” Cassie nodded smartly, and Tony felt the knife in his chest twist. He was _Uncle Tony,_ and he’d always been her favourite; _always_.

  
“Really, Stature?” he held a hand to his heart, as if it was bleeding out. “C’mon, you’ve always been my girl!” 

  
“But Shuri is _Shuri,”_ Cassie beamed as if he couldn’t possibly disagree with him on that one most obvious statement. “Don’t worry, though, I still love you and Grandpa Hank and Uncle Bruce and even Pete here. I have room enough in my heart for all of you.”

  
It wasn’t enough, not nearly. But Tony had no choice but to grumble and take what crumbs he could. 

  
“I don’t know, she’s _my_ favourite,” Morgan, however, had no qualms about twisting the blade even further. She gave a smirk that was way too on-point for a nine-year-old, her dark eyes sparkling up at him. 

  
That was it: “You’re grounded,” Tony deadpanned. “No science for a week, young lady, for having no taste whatsoever. I raised you better than this.” 

  
Morgan, in answer, very maturely stuck out her tongue. Equally as mature, Tony made a face right back. Usually, this was where Pepper stepped in.

  
But, when Pepper wasn’t there, they had Bruce. And Bruce, sometimes, knew just what to say: “Or,” he held out his hands in a placating gesture, calling for peace, “just to throw this out there: we can each make our own gifts for Lila. You know . . . as a little bit of friendly competition between geniuses?” 

  
Oh, Tony was instantly on board: this was _so_ happening. The princess was going down, once and for all. (Ignoring, of course, the little voice in the back of his mind that wondered if he’d finally met his match; he’d never admit that out loud, however. He was _Tony Stark.)_

  
“Oh yeah,” he rubbed his hands together. “Exploding arrows are _so last season._ C’mon,” he snapped his fingers, “Project: Legolas 2.0 is a go. Friday,” he called for the AI to link him to his servers as he started drawing in the air, “Daddy’s ready to crack a few eggs.” 

  
“Um, just throwing this out there,” Peter neutrally tried to interject, “but what you said earlier about responsibility and creating weapons only for a certain age bracket - ” 

  
“ - well I’m not making anything that has the capability of exploding, duh,” Tony rolled his eyes. “And besides: her dad signed off. I can’t control what goes on in the Barton household; I can only raise my own kid. So, let’s go.” 

  
And, with that, they settled down to business: namely, helping create the most ridiculously tricked out set of arrows in the history of archery. It was just like old times, but even better, when Morgan sat on the workbench right next to him and chattered in his ear with her own ideas as he sketched and fabricated. She already had a mind for physics and a knack for applying complex mathematics to practical forms, and she caught on quick as he explained his process to her. There was a reason she was already speeding through primary school, and admittedly bored with the whole process, after all. Cassie, a Berkley hopeful herself to carry on the Pym legacy, too listened with wide eyes and eagerly imputed her own thoughts. Tony couldn’t help but smirk to undo a few lines of Hank’s teaching while he was at it – he’d see that the great minds of tomorrow were brought up _right_. 

  
It was, after all, he couldn’t help but think with a smile, nothing but a bright age they had to look forward to. 


End file.
